Avodah Zarah 066

1:
Much of this mishnah has already been explained in the previous one. Once again, the situation described by our mishnah becomes clear if we add the subjects missing from the verbs.

2:
A Jew is transporting wine by cart or by ship; arriving at a town he wants to dash in, take a bath in the local bath house and hurry back again. In the meantime he leaves a non-Jew with the merchandise. Our mishnah says that he may assume that the wine is still kosher because the non-Jew would be aware that the Jew could return at any moment and so would be wary of tampering with the wine. But if the non-Jew knows that the Jew will be absent for quite some time then the same conditions exist as those described in the previous mishnah and the same rule applies. (The difference of opinion between Rabban Shim'on ben-Gamli'el and the rest of the sages applies in our present mishnah as well: see AZ 065.)

3:
The next clause of our mishnah also introduces a situation which has already been dealt with incidentally. A Jewish shop-keeper leaves a non-Jew in charge of the wine in his shop. If he is "coming and going" all the time the wine may be assumed to be kosher for the same reason we have given above. However, if the non-Jew knows that the Jew will be gone for quite some time the same rules apply as described in the previous mishnah.

In AZ 064 we learned in the mishnah:

Ze'ev Orzech writes:

I am confused: the mishnah says: anything that does not improve the flavour is permitted, i.e., the result could be unchanged, the effect neutral. Yet you take the much more stringent position that the taste has to be adversely affected. Am I missing something?

I respond:

The halakhic considerations are called in Hebrew noten ta'am lishvaĥ and noten ta'am lifgam. The first term I rendered "improves the flavour" and the other term as "spoils the flavour". One can substitute 'taste' for 'flavour'. If anything which is inherently kosher but should not have been mixed with some foodstuff or drink, the mixture renders the whole forbidden if the additive improves the taste; but if the additive spoils the taste it does not do so. The mishnah gave examples.

A question from Aviya Itzkovitz:

Why is it mentioned that we let a non-Jew guard [the wine]? Could it not be that each individual should guard his own cask?

I respond:

Aviya has misunderstood. The wine is considered to be 'guarded' (by the Jew) in certain circumstances: he may have appointed some Jew to sit with the wine to make sure that the non-Jewish worker who is present does not tamper with it, thus rendering it yeyn nesekh; or he himself is present but leaves the wine unguarded for short periods of time. (See AZ 061 for more details.) In all cases the assumption can be that as long as the non-Jew fears that a Jew will catch him tampering with the wine he will not do so, and the wine is still kosher.

Michael Epstein asks a general question:

Would it be possible to place in a line or two at the end of the shiur something that we modern folks could take from the mishna reading. What can we learn from this mishna that will help us understand Torah – Hashem – Ourselves ?

I respond:

Michael has asked for this before. I believe that last time I responded privately; this time I respond publicly because my response may be of benefit to others as well as to Michael himself.

I do not and will not do as Michael suggests. This is not the purpose of the study of Mishnah. Michael writes of understanding the word of God. But – and this is very important – we do not learn the word of God from Mishnah or Gemara! We learn the word of God from the written Torah itself. In the Torah God tells us, as it were, what we are to do, what is required of us. The Mishnah contains the words of the sages: they are not telling us what God's requirements are but rather how we are to observe those requirements. Whenever the opportunity arises I try to indicate where the origin of a mitzvah may be found in the Torah: we need to know that in order to understand how the sages are teaching us how that mitzvah is to be observed.

Take, for example, the currant topic of yeyn nesekh. The biblical origin is obscure (see AZ 057) but the sages will explain and amplify that command through to the end of the tractate! So, what we are to learn from each shiur is exactly what we do learn: how did the sages tell us to observe this or that commandment of the Torah.

It is possible to draw conclusions from what the sages say, but that is something that each of us must do for himself or for herself. Remember what we learned when we studied tractate Avot: